


Archetype

by Anonymous



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Grief/Mourning, M/M, Tony Stark Has Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2020-06-30 12:56:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19853638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: He should probably use the time to grab a few hours of sleep, but he finds himself mesmerized by the machine at work. Layer by delicate, perfect layer, he watches his design come to life.It has to work; Peter is counting on him to get this right.He won’t let the kid down again.Endgame AU where Tony's a little bit more of a mess after he gets back from Titan, and deals with it in (somewhat predictably) terrible ways.





	Archetype

The cabin was meant to be a little weekend getaway-type place; close enough to the city and the compound that he and Pepper could steal a weekend away here and there, far enough away from both places that it still felt like an escape. 

He’d meant to give it to her after the wedding. They hadn’t lasted that long.

It’s no one’s fault.

(...He’s pretty sure it’s his fault.)

It’s a nice cabin though - just big enough not to feel cramped, nice view of the lake. It’s something he never particularly thought he would like, or want, for himself. It’s rustic. And quiet.

Well, sometimes.

“Hey Mr. Stark? Are you awake?” Peter’s voice comes over the intercom. “Sorry, I couldn’t tell if you were awake yet or not, but I thought you might be.”

Tony cracks one eye open, groaning. “I’m awake. What is it, kid?”

“I was thinking about what you said last night, about the weight-to-durability ratio and materials engineering, and I came up with a new web shooter prototype. FRIDAY’s printing it out for me now.”

Okay, so possibly the cabin isn’t all that rustic, either. 

Yes, he’s wired FRIDAY into the place, along with the makings of a small lab, but that was mostly because it really had been too quiet when he’d first moved up here. He’d catch himself talking to her and feel like an idiot when she didn’t respond. 

The downside to the entire cabin being wired with the intercom is that Peter uses it liberally, peppering Tony with questions - sometimes first thing in the morning before he’s had a chance to really wake up, or when he’s in the shower, or when he’s retreated to his bedroom with a bottle of whatever was strongest and nearest to hand. The kid had a lot of questions.

Tony has to grudgingly admit that it’s a good thing; Peter’s near-constant chatter keeps him from falling too deeply into his own thoughts. It’s at least half the reason he’s here. Tony prefers not to think about the other half of the reason - that it’s not like the kid has anywhere else he can go.

FRIDAY has already pulled up a schematic of the web shooters Peter is talking about. It’s a decent design; a little sleeker than his previous set, a different material for the casing. 

“Could you maybe help me test them out and fine tune stuff, when they’re ready?”

“Sure, why not.”

It’s mid-morning, by the looks of it. He’s actually somewhat surprised Peter let him sleep this late. Usually the kid is bursting at the seams with questions and ideas he wants to share, as if his mile-a-minute mind has been stashing things away throughout the night - whenever Tony has the audacity to catch a few hours of unconsciousness. 

It takes a while for Tony to lever himself upright. Even longer to stumble his way over to the shower.

His body aches in ways it never has before, ways that it hasn’t stopped aching since Titan.

The wound at his side has long since been reduced to a thin white line of a scar, but that side is always stiff and sore in the mornings, or whenever it’s cold outside, or whenever he’s spent too long hunched over a holo-display in the lab. His wrist is the same, although he’s been dealing with that one for a lot longer.

He stretches out under the spray of the shower, scrubbing days-old sweat off his skin, vaguely surprised to find a few streaks of dirt across his right forearm. Had he been outside yesterday? Oh. He had - Peter had wanted to see a bit more of the surrounding woods. Tony had dutifully asked EDITH to record the walk so Peter could go back later to cross-reference every plant, root, and bug in the footage. 

Tony hadn’t asked, but he was pretty sure the kid was using the limited sample size to estimate how many remained of each, trying to figure out what the ecological impact must be. 

It was fine. It would keep the kid busy if nothing else, and Peter liked to stay busy - seemed to need it.

By the time Tony makes it to the kitchen, Peter’s already made coffee.

He can always tell when Peter makes it as opposed to FRIDAY, because FRIDAY has reasonable limits set in place for the strength of the brew, and Peter has absolutely none. 

Peter makes coffee just the way Tony likes: strong enough to wake the dead, with a pinch of salt in the grounds to cut the bitterness. Although he does have a tendency to try to let DUM-E help, which results in an ungodly mess more often than not.

“You didn’t shave,” Peter says. It comes out half question, half statement of fact.

“Nah, didn’t feel like bothering.”

Tony scrubs a hand over his face. Another week of not-bothering and his scruff will probably classify as a full-on beard, which will probably need to be trimmed unless he wants to fully embrace the mountain-man hermit stereotype. 

He hasn’t decided yet.

“What, you don’t like it?”

Peter gives him an inconclusive _hmm_ in reply. It reminds Tony, oddly enough, of the way his mom would sound when Tony was thirteen and talked about wanting a buzz cut or a mohawk, right before she’d say something like, _It’s your hair, sweetie, do what you want with it_.

Tony had always known the implicit permission was a trap.

Maybe he should shave after all.

*

Rhodey stops by two days later. He brings groceries with him, which Tony appreciates even as he takes pains to remind his friend that he already has a weekly delivery service.

“Yeah, so sue me, I wanted to make sure at least twenty percent of your diet wasn’t fermented,” Rhodey says, setting a paper grocery bag down on the counter and glancing around the kitchen. “It’s not healthy for you, living out here like this.”

“What are you talking about? It’s plenty healthy. Low stress, fresh air - ”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t healthy for other people, I said it wasn’t healthy for _you_. I know you Tony, you don’t do well alone.”

Tony isn’t alone. He’s got FRIDAY, and the bots, and Pete. But he bites his tongue nonetheless - bringing up the kid is only going to spark a whole separate round of debate, one that Tony doesn’t particularly want to get into, especially not with Rhodey. 

There’s a reason he’d asked FRIDAY to disable Peter’s intercom access and keep him occupied in the lab as soon as he’d heard Rhodey’s car pull up. Rhodey wouldn’t understand, and Tony knows himself well enough to know that he doesn’t quite possess the emotional fluency to explain it to him.

So instead he opens the fridge and starts putting away the pity-groceries, making sure Rhodey has a good view of the already well-stocked veggie and fruit drawers, the open carton of oat milk on the door.

Rhodey is onto him. “Having all that stuff in the fridge doesn’t do shit if you’re not actually eating it, you know.”

“I’ve almost starved to death once in recent memory, thanks. Trust me, I’m not in any hurry to repeat the experience.”

That, at least, seems to shut down the wellness check.

Neither of them are all that eager to revisit the mess Tony had been when he’d first stumbled off of that ship, rail-thin and ranting and still not totally convinced the glowing space-woman who’d carried them home wasn’t just a truly nutso hallucination. (To say nothing of the talking raccoon Thor had apparently picked up at some intergalactic gift shop. What the hell.)

There are other things they could talk about, probably. Other things maybe they should be talking about. But Rhodey’s time isn’t infinite - the man has a whole world of responsibility riding on his shoulders. Tony should probably feel guilty that even so, he still feels the need to drive all the way out here to act like a glorified delivery man.

Tony does feel guilty, actually; but it’s sort of like the metaphorical matchstick in a pile of needles, if the needles were all also things Tony feels guilty about or should feel guilty about.

Eventually Rhodey has to leave - back to the real world, the broken world that Tony has trouble facing. The world of empty stadiums and entire residential streets left abandoned because the half that remained couldn’t bear to live in the same houses where they’d once been whole. It’s the same reason Tony is hiding out here, if he’s honest.

As soon as Rhodey is gone he heads out to the workshop, where Peter is apparently sulking. 

He leaves the kid be for a while. They both have their moods.

It’s almost nice, working in peace for once. But it doesn’t take long before the silence feels oppressive; starts to remind him of the silence on the ship, dead in the air, drifting through the vast emptiness of space.

“Spit it out, kid. I’m not actually telepathic, I can’t tell what’s bugging you unless you speak up.”

“You didn’t have to hide me away from Colonel Rhodes,” Peter says, accusingly. “I wasn’t gonna like, rat you out about drinking a lot or whatever.”

Tony has to stop what he’s doing, pinching the bridge of his nose to counteract the pulse of a tension headache threatening to develop there.

“I didn’t - that’s not why I didn’t want you talking to him.”

“Then why?”

“You know why.”

“The same reason you won’t let me go out on patrol?” Peter asks.

It’s a conversation they’ve had before. Many, many times.

“It’s not safe.”

“It’s never safe, Mr. Stark. That’s kind of the point. Besides, you used to let me patrol whenever I wanted.”

“Things are different now.”

Peter snorts. “Yeah, like I don’t already know that.”

There’s a thread of bitterness in his voice. But things _are_ different now, in all sorts of ways Tony can neither control nor entirely predict.

The UN Security Council had responded to the decimation with every bit of the finger pointing and useless bluster Tony would’ve expected. He can’t blame them, exactly. They’d all lost, big time, and now suddenly they were faced with rebuilding a world that was still drowning in grief, and not a single one of them had any idea where to begin. It was always easier to rehash the past than to move forward. Easier to tear something down than it was to rebuild.

And then there was Peter. Who Tony had (just barely, by the skin of his teeth and at least half by luck alone) managed to convince to stay below the international radar, to keep him out of being forced to sign whatever was left of the Accords - back before Titan.

Who Tony absolutely couldn’t let sign now, for all sorts of reasons.

“I’m sorry, kid. I know it sucks.”

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to even do, if I can’t be out there trying to help people. What’s the point of the new web shooters if I can’t actually use them to do some good?”

Tony wishes he could see the kid’s face, but he can’t. He can imagine it well enough though. Perhaps too well - the slightest tremble of his lips, the pleading, desperate look in his eyes. It sounds like Peter is on the edge of tears, and it makes Tony feel every bit like a monster. 

Because _of course_ the kid wants to throw himself right back into the thick of it.

Maybe at first he’d been content with just hanging around Tony out here in the middle of nowhere, and Tony would be lying if he said he hadn’t appreciated the constant attention. Needed it, really. But Tony was one person, and there was a whole world of people who needed help.

And Peter had never been the kind of kid to ignore that, before or after Titan. 

Just because Tony is in no condition to help them doesn’t mean he should stop Peter from doing the same. He can’t keep the kid hidden away up here indefinitely, printing out web shooter prototypes he’ll never use, much as Tony may want to.

Peter could do a lot of good out there, given the right resources - the kind of thing Tony can’t create here in the cabin, even souped up as it is.

*

Driving into the city shouldn’t feel like a challenge. It shouldn’t make his heart race and his palms sweat, but it does. 

He’s not sure what’s worse - the far too empty streets or the almost incongruously colorful array of missing posters and tributes blanketing the empty storefronts. It makes the city look almost festive, like the aftermath of a ticker tape parade when the Yankees bag another Championship, except the Yankees as a team don’t exist anymore. 

Neither do the Mets, which Peter bemoans at great length.

Despite his ratcheting anxiety, Tony makes it to the tower without incident. No one is around, which isn’t really luck so much as it is circumstance - the tower had been caught mid-sale when the snap happened, and the rest was basic supply and demand. Real estate prices had plummeted - yes, even in Manhattan. The buyers, the ones that were left, had pulled out.

Tony hasn’t cared enough to put it up for sale again. The tower is still Tony’s, empty shell though it is. 

_Mostly_ empty shell, that is. 

All the really critical stuff has been moved up to the compound already, and while the resources at the compound would make this little pet project of his a hell of a lot easier - unlike the tower, the compound is very much still in use.

So Tony does what he does best: he improvises.

Tony and Bruce and Helen had all kept labs here, and all three of them had left some interesting bits and baubles behind - the kind of stuff that maybe wasn’t super high-priority, but would have been moved out eventually, had the sale ever been finalized. Old tech prototypes and test materials, research notes and the like. 

Things that largely seemed unimportant now, given the enormity of the loss they all faced.

The air in the old medlab is thick and stagnant, but Tony doesn’t want to bother kicking on the HVAC for the whole tower just to supply one level. He cuts out the upper half of a window and calls it a day, ignoring the way the wind howls and the cool air raises goosebumps on his arms. 

It helps keep him focused, awake.

And he does stay awake. For three days - no, maybe four? Peter would probably worry if he knew. FRIDAY is probably keeping track, but Tony doesn’t ask. It doesn’t matter. He plies himself with protein bars and coffee - the weaker stuff that FRIDAY makes - by necessity more than actual thirst or hunger.

It isn’t anything like building the other suits. There’s no beta testing for this. If he gets it wrong, he’s pretty damn sure that even if he had more, he wouldn't be able to bring himself to try again. 

That’s okay. He’s always done some of his best work under pressure.

“Gimme an estimate on printing time,” he asks FRIDAY.

“Sixteen hours, boss. But the cradle was never designed to be used in this - ”

“I know. Wasn’t asking for an ethics lesson, FRI, just a number.”

“I was speaking mechanically, not ethically, boss.” Her tone heavily implies that she would very much like to be doing the latter as well, if her protocols allowed it. 

Tony’s not actually sure where she learned to be judgy about his scientific pursuits in the first place, unless it was just another instance of Peter’s influence rubbing off on her. 

He should probably use the time to grab a few hours of sleep, but he finds himself mesmerized by the cradle at work. Layer by delicate, perfect layer, he watches his design come to life. It has to work. 

Peter is counting on him to get this right. 

He won’t let the kid down again.

*

When he’s finished, _finally_ finished, standing in the lab half-delirious and half-euphoric, he braces himself for Peter’s reaction.

Peter, for his part, stares down at his hand, turning it over and over, watching as the nanites ebb and flow over his skin almost instinctively. Tony can see the kid’s throat working, is enthralled by the sight; like the words are forming and reforming right there, incapable of making it past his lips just yet.

Every function test they run comes back flawless. Peter takes a shaky breath, looking up at Tony almost desperately.

“You did this, so I could - ?”

“Yep.” Tony would like to brush it off, but finds that he can’t. “Just promise me you’re gonna be careful with this one, okay? I’d remind you that you only get the one but, seeing as you’re already on your second - ”

“I’ll be careful,” Peter says, so earnestly it aches to hear.

Tony squeezes the kid’s shoulder, leaves his hand there probably far too long. He can’t help it. Peter is warm and solid and safe, sitting on the lab bench in front of him right now, and part of Tony is screaming objections to ever letting the kid leave his sight. But that’s not why Peter is here.

Instead, Tony raises an eyebrow at the kid and glances over at the half-window.

Peter’s face breaks out in a grin.

“Really? You’re not gonna make me like, spend a million hours going through a training protocol first?”

“If I tried to make you spend a _million_ hours going through a training protocol, would you actually do it? Because I can have FRIDAY create one, if you want - ”

“No! No, that’s totally fine. I’m good. I’m ready.”

Peter is leaning forward, already half-standing. Tony sweeps one arm towards the window in invitation.

“Thanks Mr. Stark!” Peter calls out as he dives outside, immediately followed by a rapidly descending _Woooo!_

Tony braces one hand against the lab bench, tries not to imagine the way Peter must be free-falling towards the concrete at that very moment. His other hand flexes and clenches, trying to work out the ever-present stiffness in his wrist.

Fuck it. “Hey, FRIDAY? Gimme visuals.”

FRIDAY pulls up a display with the view from Peter’s suit, plus a few others where he’s already been caught on a few security cameras. 

Tony grabs a drink and collapses back onto the futon. 

It’s been a long few days with too little sleep and too much anxiety - but on screen, he can see Peter waving at civilians, doing flips on demand to entertain passing children, stopping to help a woman who dropped her stack of flyers in the street.

The news that night is plastered with video clips and blurry pics of the kid swinging through the city, anchormen and anchorwomen excitedly reporting the news that Spider-Man is alive and well. Speculating on where he’s been, on whether it’s the same person now as it was then.

For the first time in months, Tony feels a warmth settle over his chest. Because he did that - Pete may be the one out there giving people hope, something to cling to, but Tony was the one who made it possible. 

He did something, and it mattered, maybe.

He raises a toast up towards the screen, where a masked Peter is posing with a group of schoolkids - pretending to web them up, making them laugh.

Tony doesn’t remember finishing the bottle, only that by the time he notices it’s empty he’s lost the coordination necessary to make it across the room to get another.

*

They move back to the tower almost by default, staying there so that Peter can go out on patrol as much as he likes, Tony not even stopping to consider that he could, hypothetically, go back to the cabin alone while Peter did his thing in the city.

Tony does concede to moving off of the futon in the lab though. 

The penthouse is mostly devoid of furniture, but there’s a couple guest rooms that still happen to have beds, at least, although they’re short on sheets. They make do.

FRIDAY reroutes and doubles the grocery deliveries without being asked. Tony leaves the HVAC off, opting instead to leave the balcony doors wide open for air circulation, enabling Peter to come and go as he pleases from either the lab or the penthouse.

“Aren’t you worried about like bugs and birds and stuff flying in?”

Tony shrugs. “Nah. I’ve got you to take care of that.”

“Very funny.”

“Wasn’t joking, kid. I’m too old for that shit. I’m relying on your spry young reflexes to handle things.”

“Whatever,” Peter says, rolling his eyes and shoving a spoonful of cereal in his mouth. “You’re not that old.”

“Says the literal infant.”

Peter laughs.

They settle into a routine. Peter will sleep in late, stumbling into the kitchen in search of food, still rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He goes out in the afternoon, comes back in time to have dinner with Tony, and goes back out again after the sun sets.

Tony keeps the video display running while he’s gone. 

The kid sticks to his promise though - he’s careful, or at least as careful as he’s capable of being, given that he routinely throws himself off of skyscrapers and between muggers and their would-be victims.

They talk about the patrols over breakfast, or sometimes lunch, depending on how late Peter was out the night before and how much Tony has had to drink. Tony doesn’t try to hide that he watches the recordings, and Peter doesn’t object too strenuously to the big brother surveillance situation. It works.

“Should I be like, going to school or something?” Peter asks one afternoon.

Tony looks up from his tablet, caught off-guard.

“Do you want to?”

“Not really. I mean, Midtown is closed now anyway. And most of the kids I used to know are - you know, gone.”

“So you’re mostly asking because you want me to tell you you’re not being a complete degenerate by playing hooky every day?”

“Um, yeah. Pretty much.”

“Pete, the world ended. If you don’t want to go to school, don’t go to school. Don’t waste your energy feeling guilty about it.”

“Right. Thanks.”

*

Something changes between them around that time - aside from the obvious, that is. Tony isn’t sure when or how, exactly, but he suspects it isn’t all on him, for once.

Peter will plop down next to him on the one remaining couch, shoulder-to-shoulder and thigh-to-thigh, or lean up against his side when they’re working together in the lab. It never occurs to Tony to move away, put some distance between them the way he might have done so easily before.

Instead he finds himself chasing those moments of contact, relaxing into them. Something about having solid, tangible proof that Peter is here, safe, calms his jittering nerves in a way he hasn’t felt in a long time.

But if he reaches out a little more than usual, ruffling the kid’s hair because he likes the put-upon face Peter makes, or touches his shoulder, or his back; Peter never seems to object.

The kid will sit sideways on the couch, back resting up against Tony’s side, Tony’s arm looped around his stomach as they both read, or fiddle around on their tablets, or pretend to watch a movie. 

Tony is aware that he doesn’t have any right to feel possessive - Peter is only staying with him by default; a lack of other options, given the situation. May is gone, so are most of the kid’s friends. He doesn’t have any other family.

Tony knows all of this, but it doesn’t stop the lizard-brain response that rears up in those quiet moments. 

_I did this, I brought him back. He’s mine_ , Tony will think to himself over and over again, like a drumbeat, even as he tries not to. 

*

The first time Tony notices Peter is back at his old apartment, he doesn’t say anything. 

It becomes almost like a touchstone for the kid, Tony would guess. Peter doesn’t talk about it, but he stops by there each night, sometimes staying only a few minutes, sometimes for hours at a time.

He doesn’t seem to be doing anything specific while he’s there, just wandering from room to room, sometimes sitting on the couch or standing at the open doorway to May’s room.

“Hey, so how was patrol last night?”

“Eh, you know. The usual,” Peter says, poking at his sandwich.

It wasn’t though. The kid had spent practically the entire night curled up on May’s bed, his face pressed into her pillow.

Tony has been trying his best to leave it be, to let the kid work through his grief in his own time, but the behaviour is worrying in more ways than one. Tony has fucked up so many things in his life, he can’t handle the thought that he might have fucked this up, too. Peter is the one good thing he’s been able to give back to the world since the snap, the only thing since then he’s managed to do, and do right.

“It’s okay to miss her. You know that, right?” he says.

Peter doesn’t look up. “I know.”

“So you don’t have to hide it, if you need to spend time there. Grieving is healthy, or so I’m told.”

“I know.”

“You planning on saying anything that isn’t ‘I know’?”

“What if I don’t miss her?”

Okay that... was not what Tony was expecting.

“I mean, it’s not like I’m glad she’s gone, but - I look at all the missing posters and stuff people put up on the street, and I go back to the apartment and it’s just… nothing. I thought if I spent enough time there, something would happen, you know?” Peter pauses for a breath. “But I keep going back there and nothing changes. How can I help people if I can’t even understand what they’re going through?”

“Kid, it’s - ” Tony stops. 

He has no clue how to respond. If Tony knew how to appropriately handle grief, then Peter - or this version of him at least, wouldn’t be sitting here now. Tony clenches his fist, rolling his wrist around under the table, trying to work out the ache.

“It’s okay not to know how to feel,” he tries. “Everyone handles grief differently. Maybe you just need to give yourself a little more time.”

There. That sounded right.

Except Peter is shaking his head.

“You don’t understand. It’s not that I don’t know how to feel about it, it’s that I don’t feel _anything_. There’s a ton of these message boards now for people to talk about like, mourning and learning how to deal or whatever. People post about their memories, stuff that they miss the most, the parts that hurt the worst, and I just - I can’t. It’s not there.” 

Peter looks up at him. “It’s not like I want to be sad, and I guess you didn’t, you know, make me to be sad, but I can’t - I don’t know how to explain it. It doesn’t feel right. What if something went wrong? What if you missed pieces - like, important pieces?”

“Maybe you don’t have to mourn her,” Tony blurts out, desperate to stop that train of thought in its tracks. Peter looks stricken. “I’m serious. Just because everyone else has that weight around their neck doesn’t mean you have to go find your own to carry.”

“He would mourn her, if he were here,” the kid says, quietly.

Tony doesn’t have an answer for that. He doesn’t have to ask who Peter means.

They’ve never really talked about it. Early on, Tony had just pretended that nothing had happened, that Peter had come back from Titan as a disembodied voice in his walls.

As if Tony hadn’t stumbled his way back to life, pushing away Pepper, and Rhodey, and anyone else who might have dared to interrupt his overwhelming grief. As if Tony hadn’t been half-mad and still recovering from nearly dying himself when he’d first programmed himself a replacement, a voice in the walls to keep him company.

As if Peter hadn’t crumbled to dust at all.

*

The thing was, Tony had access to a metric ton of data on one Peter Parker. 

He had video logs and body scans from all the time in the suit, he had the kid’s social media pages, phone history, school report cards, doctor’s records, blood samples - all that stuff. Far more than he probably should, far more than Peter - the real Peter, the one that isn’t around to know or care anymore, would probably be comfortable with him knowing.

But he doesn’t have any of those critical moments that wouldn’t have been digitized; hadn’t been saved for posterity the way the modern world does so effortlessly, so thoughtlessly these days, squirrelling away tidbits of data like an obsessed magpie.

Tony had assumed the aggregate of all that information grafted onto a carefully constructed heuristic intelligence framework to mimic Peter’s thought patterns would be enough to fill in all the gaps. 

Except, it doesn’t. Not entirely.

Peter may have text conversations and phone calls with May downloaded into his artificially-reproduced brain, but if he ever crawled into her bed as a child after a nightmare or cried in her arms, that frame of reference is missing. If she cut his sandwiches a certain way or they sat sprawled out together on the couch watching movies every Sunday afternoon, that was missing too. 

Tony could load the movies themselves into Peter’s brain - and he had, but not the context.

No wonder there’s a hole.

May is an abstract concept to the kid: a voice over the phone, a smiling face in a series of contextless photos from Peter’s childhood. 

Pete is far too smart not to understand that he should be mourning her, and he’s also far too smart to miss that he isn’t _capable_ of mourning her - not the way other people all across the world are doing for their lost loved ones, or the way the real Peter would have done, if he had lived.

In Tony’s frenzied attempt to get Peter back in whatever way he could, to stop the ever-present bone-deep ache of missing him, of failing him, to dig his way out of his own grief by ingenuity and sheer force of will if need be, to move on; he’d gone and created a version of Peter who couldn’t quite do the same.

“I don’t - ” Tony has to stop to clear his throat. “Kid, I don’t know if this is something I can fix.”

“I didn’t think you could. That’s why I kept going back to the apartment. I thought if I spent enough time there, if I looked at the pictures on the walls, and read her books, and smelled her shampoo on the pillow I’d… I don’t know. I thought it could fill in the missing parts. But it didn’t. None of it feels real to me.”

“You don’t have to be him,” Tony says, quietly.

“Isn’t that why I’m here?”

Tony would be lying if he said no. Because of course this Peter had been created - obsessively, irrationally, adoringly - to replace the one he’d lost. If he’d had his way, this Peter would be a perfect replica. 

And he is - physically, at least.

Tony pulls Peter close, clutching the kid to his chest. “You’re perfect. I don’t want you ever doubting that, got it?”

Tony can feel Peter’s breath hitch, his shoulders pulled up tight, face pressed right up against Tony’s breastbone.

“I’m sorry,” the kid says.

This time when the kid apologizes for no good reason, Tony has his answer at the ready. “Don’t be sorry, you’ve got nothing to be sorry for.”

They stand that way for a while, Tony murmuring his own apologies in Peter’s ear, relishing how solid Peter feels in his arms. 

This Peter may not be a perfect replica, but he’s here, alive. And he’s not about to fade away this time.

*

Peter stops going back to the apartment after that. 

Tony isn’t sure if it’s because he’s taking Tony’s advice and leaving it be, or because he’s just given up on triggering an emotional response for a woman he can’t truly remember.

Peter starts going back to more regular patrols. Helping people move out of apartments that hold one too many depressing memories. Cleaning up some of the detritus still left in the streets from the snap - crashed cars, a downed helicopter, a giant construction crane that'd tipped over mid-swing. In the immediate aftermath, it’d been easier for those left behind to just to close down the worst-affected streets than to face the task of all that cleanup head on. 

Tony thinks about putting on his own suit and trying to help, but every time he looks at one of the old suits his hands shake and his chest tightens until it feels like he can’t get enough air in his lungs. 

He can’t do it.

It’s okay, he thinks. Peter is out there every day, doing what he can to help.

(It’s not enough.)

*

They aren’t calling it an anniversary, even though that’s what it is. Tony hears all kinds of other phrases thrown around for it. A commemoration, a memorial, a ‘day of remembrance.’ No one seems to be able to find the right words.

Whatever.

He and Peter bug out of the city a week before The Day. 

Tony can’t stand the sight of the banners going up, the podiums being erected so bald-faced politicians can wax poetic about humanity’s strengths and sacrifices, the promise of tomorrow, all that bullshit.

Peter, for his part, doesn’t actually remember the… event. God, and that’s a terrible word for it too. 

He knows the broad strokes of what happened, obviously, but he doesn’t have any first-hand experiences to draw on when it comes up. Any suit data from that day had been lost when the kid faded away on Titan. 

Tony figures that’s probably part of the reason why the kid spends the next week glued to the TV, flipping back and forth between every news story and memorial special he can find.

“If it would help, I can set you up with access to my suit logs. It won’t be the same as having your own memories, but it’ll be something,” Tony says, the day before The Day. As much as it kills him to even think of it, he feels obligated to offer. “Only if you want to.”

Peter pauses the TV, nodding slowly without looking away from the screen.

The half-destroyed helmet from the Mark 50 is somewhere in the garage. Tony knows exactly where - of course he knows where, even if he hasn’t been able to look at the thing in months. He’s pathetically grateful Peter isn’t there to see the way his hands shake when he picks it up, turning it over and over in front of him.

It feels cold in his hands. Cold, and heavy, and dead. 

Tony can remember a time when the steady hum of his tech used to be a reassuring presence. Now, he grits his teeth as he wires up the remains of the helmet to power it on. Peter must have heard him come back inside, when he looks up he sees Peter hovering in the doorway, watching. 

He notices Tony notice him.

“Should I?” Peter makes an abortive gesture towards the helmet and Tony nods, beckoning him over.

“Want me to hang around?” Tony asks.

Peter shakes his head. “No, it’s okay. You already had to go through it once. You don’t have to stay for this.”

Tony feels like a coward, but he takes the out Peter is offering and escapes to the kitchen to pour himself a drink. 

He doesn’t watch any of the memorial services. 

Instead he watches the slosh of golden-amber bourbon in his glass as he tips it one way and the other in the light, examining the color after each sip, until the glass is empty. 

Then he refills it, and starts again.

*

The next time Tony is both fully conscious and mostly sober at the same time is two days later, when he wakes up with a roaring headache and the taste of death in his mouth. There’s a blanket spread out over him and a glass of water on the coffee table in front of him.

Peter is curled up in the armchair a few feet away, sleeping. He’s got the helmet clutched loosely in one fist, dangling precariously over the arm of the chair.

Tony sits up, digging the heels of his hands against his eyes. He chugs down half the water, knocks back four ibuprofen from the bottle sitting on the end table, and then finishes off the glass.

Peter shifts in his sleep, turning his face towards the back of the chair, probably trying to block out the early-morning light.

The kid looks tired, even asleep. Tony isn’t sure when he must’ve come in, he only has fuzzy memories of the previous day or so. He thinks he can recall a slightly disjointed conversation, Peter trying to get him to go to bed, probably. He can remember slapping the kid’s hands away. 

He can remember offering the kid a drink. He’s about eighty percent sure Peter hadn’t accepted.

Tony stands up, stretching out his arms, his back, rolling his wrist around carefully to work out the kinks. He grabs the blanket off the floor and drapes it over Peter, running a hand over his hair and shushing him when the kid starts to stir.

“It’s okay, go back to sleep.” Tony’s voice comes out dry and coarse, barely there, but Peter seems to relax anyway.

He plucks the helmet from Peter’s hands, working carefully to peel Peter’s fingers away from the metal without waking him. The helmet gets deposited on a nearby shelf, facing the wall. He briefly considers the merits of throwing the thing in the goddamn lake. 

He’ll deal with it later. 

Tony brews a pot of coffee. Considers making a smoothie to get something in his stomach that isn’t bile or caffeine, but decides against it. He can’t deal with the screech of a blender right now.

“You’re awake,” Peter says groggily, his head poking up over the back of the chair.

“Apparently. Hey, how come you’re sleeping out here? Your bed’s gotta be more comfortable than that chair.”

“I bet your bed is probably more comfortable than the couch too.” Peter’s got him there. “Besides, I had to make sure you didn’t like, throw up and aspirate your own vomit while you were passed out.”

“You didn’t have to do that, kid. FRIDAY would’ve kept an eye on me.”

Tony can’t define the look that passes over Peter’s face in response. There’s something ugly about it he doesn’t want to examine too closely, something a little too close to pity. And hurt.

“Hey, you want pancakes? Let’s make pancakes,” Tony says.

He turns around, starts pulling things out of cabinets somewhat at random. They’ve got the basics - flour, baking soda, salt, milk, eggs. He’s pretty sure there’s a bag of chocolate chips tucked away somewhere, maybe near the back, but the thought of adding something that rich and sweet to the batter makes his stomach churn. 

He leaves the chocolate chips where they are.

Peter comes over just as Tony is finishing mixing up the batter. He pulls himself up to sit on the counter next to the stove, and Tony hands him a plate and a spatula. 

They make a stack of pancakes tall enough that it’s nearly tipping over, Tony pulling pancakes off the top to fold in half and eat with his hands, needing something to start soaking up the caffeine and calm the shakes.

Peter eats at a slightly more sedate pace, taking the time to douse the stack in syrup and dig in with a knife and fork like an actual human being.

His eyes are red-rimmed and puffy.

“Did you want to talk about what you saw yesterday?” Tony asks.

“No offense Mr. Stark, but I’ve seen you drink plenty of times before,” Peter says through a mouthful of pancake.

“Not what I was asking about, Pete.”

Peter swallows, licking the syrup from his lips and looking down at his lap. “You mean Titan.”

“Yeah, that.”

“Not really, no.”

“Seriously, nothing? Space travel, genocidal aliens, universe-ending battle, but nah, no big deal, that all makes perfect sense to you?”

Peter shrugs. “It’s like you said, they’re not my memories. It’s scary to watch, but it’s like it’s not really real to me. I’m not him.”

 _You are_ , he wants to say. _You have to be, because otherwise he’s still gone. And he can’t be gone_. 

Tony’s hand clenches against the edge of the countertop. 

“I guess I did have a question,” Peter says, after a minute. “Why did he apologize? At the end, I mean.”

“I don’t know.”

“Was it - did he screw up in the fight? ‘Cause he couldn’t get the glove off fast enough? Or ‘cause he stayed on the ship when he wasn’t supposed to?”

“Jesus, kid. I told you I don’t know. But he didn’t screw up on Titan - if he had, then I would know what the fuck he thought he was apologizing for. But I don’t, okay? You’d have to ask him that.”

“But I can’t.”

“Yeah, well that makes two of us.”

Peter finishes off the rest of the pancakes in silence. Tony leaves him to handle the clean up in the kitchen, stumbling off to bed.

The next day they pack up and head back to the city. 

They don’t talk about it again.

*

Rhodey stops by the tower every once in a while. He brings groceries that Tony doesn’t need but appreciates nonetheless. Tony doesn’t bother to hide the empty liquor bottles and Rhodey doesn’t bother to hide his disappointment.

“I don’t know if you noticed all the way up here in your tower, but the world kind of ended down there. We could really use your help.”

“I’ve been helping," Tony says. "You want to know how many infrastructure problems I’ve fixed from right up here in my tower?”

“I meant for more than just fixing the power grid, Tones. It’s been a year. Hiding up here isn’t any better for you than hiding out at the cabin was, you’ve gotta know that.”

“Don’t you have more important things to worry about than making sure I’m taking my daily constitutional?”

“I do, actually. And yet here I am, trying to be a good friend.”

Tony tells him he’ll think about it. He’s pretty sure they both know he’s lying. 

Trying to explain would be worse - better that Rhodey continue thinking it’s a choice, staying out of the suit, out of commission.

Rhodey of all people wouldn’t understand. He’d hit the ground at terminal velocity in Berlin, lost the use of his legs; nearly died. And as soon as his PT progress had allowed, he’d strapped himself right back into the War Machine suit without even blinking. 

Tony had always known his friend was stupidly brave - in almost the exact same way that Peter was stupidly brave, but he hadn’t fully appreciated what that meant until that moment.

How can Tony possibly explain that he can design and build new suits all the livelong day, but the thought of stepping inside one sets his heart pounding so hard and so fast his vision actually starts to blur around the edges?

He can’t.

So, he doesn’t.

*

It’s not like that’s the only thing Tony can’t explain to anyone else. 

There are these moments, sometimes, where Tony knows with heart-stopping clarity that he’s done something unforgivable. It’s not like he’s unaware of the mad scientist implications. He literally _printed life_. And not just ‘life’ like a single-celled organism, but a living, breathing, thinking person. 

Fortunately or unfortunately, he’s just as aware that he is not, in fact, infallible. No matter how much he might like to pretend otherwise, at least outwardly.

Sometimes it’s just when they’re in the lab together and Peter is grinning and happy, his fingers dancing over the holo projection like he was born to it, and Tony remembers - yes. Technically, he was.

Sometimes it’s when Peter is curled up on the couch with that fucking helmet clutched in one hand again, his eyes red with tears. Every ounce of that pain falls squarely on Tony’s shoulders. He did this. He brought the kid back to this. Back to a shattered world and a life that maybe wasn’t even really his to begin with. 

What the fuck was he thinking?

But sometimes it’s moments like this one when doubt hits the hardest, when Peter seems to zone out mid-conversation, or stutter and hunch over in his seat in a way Tony is almost certain he never noticed the original version do.

Tony does his best not to think of these moments as malfunctions, but he can’t entirely help it. 

He wonders, sometimes, just how badly he might have screwed up. What if Peter’s programming was slowly crumbling - some minor flaw in the base structure Tony’s created, exacerbated by the weight of the heuristic algorithms that enabled the kid to learn and develop? What if these tiny moments are like breadcrumbs, the first fleeting symptoms of impending disaster? 

He can’t face losing the kid a second time.

Tony does something he hasn’t done since PETE first came online: opens up the kid’s base coding. Not the actual coding in Peter’s head - he can’t risk messing around in there until he has a better idea of what the hell might be going on - but the original databank from back when PETE was just a voice over the intercom.

“FRIDAY, bring us back to 2:15 this afternoon, in the lab.”

Ah, there it is. 

He and Peter had been working on a utility reallocation project for some city in the midwest - Cincinnati or Omaha, maybe? It’s not important. 

What was important was the way Peter kept… _glitching_ , for lack of a better word. He’d blanked out on a fairly basic fluid dynamics equation, blinking at Tony across the holo display until Tony had reached out to wave a hand in front of his face.

Tony checks the memory files for the formula first, which he finds intact and perfectly correct. Then he starts digging his way through the associated reference pointers, trying to figure out if perhaps the information was there but inaccessible for some reason. But the reference pointers seem to be in order; there are a few mystifying connections Tony can’t figure out, but they don’t seem to be impeding any of PETE’s processes.

“I want to run a sim,” he tells FRIDAY. “Run this consciousness through the scenario from earlier and show me what lights up.”

Tony watches as different sections of PETE’s consciousness flare to life - sensory input from the lab, then the background information of what they’d been working on, rehashing the conversation right to the point where - there. That was it. 

“What am I looking at?” Tony asks, reaching into the holo display and pulling the lit up portion of it closer.

“I’m not sure,” FRIDAY replies.

It’s not a part of the structure he’d built himself, he knows that much - it’s too ad hoc for that, almost organic. Obviously created by PETE’s developmental algorithms, the ones that allowed him to grow and change, make connections between seemingly unconnected things, the way any other human brain would. 

There’s a ton of linkages there: to memory files, to sensory input, to practically every other part of the artificial brain map. 

But FRIDAY’s uncertainty is what turns out to be the biggest clue. She knows every piece of PETE’s programming, probably better than Tony knows it himself. For her not to be familiar with a developing part of it - well, it makes sense, actually. Tony had programmed FRIDAY with the ability to calculate odds, to run every conceivable scenario if needed, but he’d never programmed her to have an imagination.

Because that’s what this was: a messy amalgamation of different thoughts and ideas stacked one on top of each other like legos. This wasn’t the cold calculation of FRIDAY running probability scenarios, this was PETE assembling possibilities and scenarios he liked, just because he could.

The kid wasn’t glitching. He was _daydreaming_.

Tony is so relieved he could laugh, and he does. At himself, mostly, for jumping to the very worst possible explanation before even considering the most obviously human one.

He has FRIDAY run through the scenario one more time, just for kicks, with the video from the lab playing at the same time. Watches as Peter cracks a small grin when Tony praises him for catching a potential problem, the way the kid’s hand fidgets unconsciously with part of the holo display for a moment before he seems to zone out completely. 

The kid snaps back to attention barely a minute later, ducking his head, embarrassed by the lapse. 

He shouldn’t be embarrassed. He’s more than Tony could’ve dreamed of when he’d first set his mind to this insanity. He’s as close to the real thing as he can be, given that the real Peter is little more than a streak of dust on an alien planet somewhere billions of lightyears from Earth.

Tony’s heart thuds in his chest at the passing thought.

Every time it comes back to him, unbidden, he can feel himself spiralling downwards - so far and so fast that the velocity must be incalculable. 

He feels ripped in two by the whiplash of it: here is Peter, warm and solid and alive and so achingly close to the real thing. There’s the other version of Peter though too - the real one, crying and begging Tony to save him even as he fades away.

Tony drinks that night, more than he has in a while.

In the silence of his bedroom he offers up toast after toast to PETE’s daydreams and his own nightmares.

 _Salud_.

*

Peter having the capacity to dream has other, entirely predictable implications: there are nights when neither one of them sleep. 

Tony will wander upstairs in search of coffee or sustenance or liquor, and find the kid perched on the couch, still awake. Tonight he finds Peter staring at that goddamn helmet again, like the kid expects it to levitate across the room and attack at any moment.

“Pete?”

Peter jerks back, his head whipping up. “Huh?”

“You headed out on patrol or coming back in?”

“Oh, um. I don’t know.”

Tony hasn’t quite managed to suss out what the kid’s deal is with the helmet. He hasn't quite been able to bring himself to ask, either.

Peter had said himself that none of the stuff on Titan felt real to him; it couldn’t, not when Peter didn’t have any memories of his own to draw on. And as glad as Tony is that the kid doesn’t have to contend with that particular set of nightmares, there are times when Tony is indescribably jealous of him for it.

Still, just because the kid doesn’t remember Titan doesn’t mean he doesn’t have his own nightmares. Tony hasn’t asked what they are, and Peter returns the favor by not asking Tony about his own.

Tony sinks down on the couch next to the kid, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and pulling him into his side. Peter goes easily, just as he always does. 

Tony closes his eyes, tips his head down towards Peter until his nose is buried in the kid’s hair. Peter doesn’t smell the same as he had, back on Titan - those last panicked seconds before the end. On Titan, Peter had smelled of sand and dirt and fresh sweat. 

There’s no hint of that now, thank god. Peter’s hair is clean and soft, and smells of the same subtle scent from the shampoo they both use. The same soap too. 

And there it is again; that feeling of ownership that puts a painful twist in Tony’s gut. He knows he shouldn’t feel that way. Peter is intelligent, and independent, and self-aware. He has every right to be his own person, regardless of how the rest of the world might see things, if they knew. 

Tony’s arm tightens around Peter. All the better that they don’t.

They stay like that for a long time, Peter leaning into Tony’s side, Tony’s hand rubbing up and down his arm. 

He’s not sure when the kid falls asleep, but at some point he notices the way Peter’s head is lolling forwards at an uncomfortable-looking angle. He shifts the kid up a bit, maneuvering him around until his head is tucked up against Tony’s neck and shoulder. Peter mumbles something in his sleep, but doesn’t wake up.

The drumbeat is only getting louder, more insistent rather than less. 

Tony had assumed - perhaps naively, that the steady pulse of it would fade as he got used to the idea of the kid being alive again. 

It had been that way with Pepper for a while; after Killian, and Extremis. Both of them had been a little off-kilter for months. But it had faded eventually, settled back somewhere close to normal.

Tony figures there’s a vital difference there - Pepper had still been herself. Tony may have fine-tuned her DNA to remove Extremis, but he had only been undoing Killian’s interference to get her back to normal.

But Peter - _this_ Peter, he’d created wholecloth, cell by precious cell.

He’d watched each limb form, seen the first miniscule twitch of his fingers, the dip of his brow as his conscious mind had come online. 

It may not be right, and it sure as shit can’t be healthy, but Peter was _his_ , every last inch of him. 

*

It turns out to be true in more ways than Tony realized. Well - at least one more very specific way than he’d realized.

He’s long since stopped worrying about Peter’s occasional daydreams, but that doesn’t mean he can entirely ignore them, especially once he starts to notice a pattern. 

Running his fingers through the kid’s hair will usually do it, as does particularly well-earned praise. A quick squeeze of his hand on the back of the kid’s neck is almost guaranteed. 

And Tony - well, Tony is naturally curious. 

He pushes things. Not really on purpose, it’s not like he specifically planned to, but he can’t help himself. 

He likes the way Peter’s eyes go a little unfocused, the way the line of his mouth will soften, falling open just slightly. If Tony gets it just right, it takes a couple seconds for Peter to snap back to the present, blinking rapidly and blushing.

Tony tells himself he doesn’t notice the way Peter is sometimes left half-hard in his jeans, afterward. It’s easier to ignore when he’s dressed in street clothes. But in the suit, or just in his boxers and a t-shirt, it’s almost impossible to miss.

Eventually Tony has to acknowledge what he’s doing though; he’s teasing the kid. He’s teasing the kid _on purpose_ , and he’s enjoying it.

Peter doesn’t seem to mind - all available evidence points to him very much enjoying the attention, frustrating as it must be.

And that’s where Tony hits a mental wall so hard it leaves him gasping for breath, clutching the edge of a lab table. Because Peter - the real Peter, had never reacted that way to him. Tony’s almost sure of it. And if it wasn’t something that came from the original Peter...

He could swear he hadn’t programmed PETE to want that. 

At least, not intentionally.

He double and triple checks that Peter is out on patrol before asking FRIDAY to pull up the source code once again. 

It’s got to be something to do with sensory processing, he figures. Or maybe some kind of self-fulfilling feedback loop in his heuristic learning algorithms. Hell, maybe it was just a crossed wires type situation - not that Peter had any wires, he was as much flesh and bone as Tony was, but the idea with nerve endings was functionally the same.

Maybe Peter’s artificially developed brain just had trouble processing overwhelming sensory input. It’s possible. He knows both versions of the kid sometimes had trouble with that, although normally that was in the context of too much light or some kind of overwhelming sound. 

There was a reason Tony had specifically engineered the kids’ suits to compensate.

But he doesn’t find anything damning in the source code, or anywhere else for that matter. None of the programming pointed Peter’s subconscious reactions in that direction, not as far as he can tell.

He’s only slightly relieved by the confirmation that he hadn’t somehow _programmed_ Peter to be sexually aroused by his touch. 

It still begged the question though - why?

FRIDAY is the one who suggests he review the base files. He hadn’t bothered, when he’d originally created PETE - there’d been no reason to. All he was doing was taking that source data and letting Peter’s consciousness slot each memory and thought into place. 

It was sort of like programming a robot librarian and letting them loose on a pile of random books - he had to give the AI a baseline idea of what to do and how to do it, but he didn’t have to be familiar with the contents of each book that would build the library.

Besides, PETE’s hypothetical ‘library’ was literally terabytes of data, possibly more.

Aside from the basics - everything the kid would’ve learned in school up to that point, details about his life and neighborhood, every TV show, movie, and book he might have conceivably seen or read - there were also thousands of hours of what Tony thought of as primary source material. Every minute the kid had spent in the Mark I suit was loaded in there, along with every time he’d come by the lab to work with Tony, and every time Tony had met the kid outside the lab with EDITH riding shotgun. Right up to the point where a goddamn spaceship had landed in the middle of 6th Ave.

He starts with their interactions from the very beginning. 

Nothing pings him as all that different. Yeah, the kid was a fanboy from the jump, that much had been obvious the first time around. It aches to watch though, even knowing that some version of Peter is still out there at this very moment. 

The Peter that had once webbed Tony to his bedroom door knob was gone.

That specific memory is linked to a whole host of others, like the kid putting on the suit for the first time, filming the whole thing on his phone and chattering nonstop about how cool it was. It’s linked to the next time Tony had seen the kid in person, just outside the airport in Berlin so he could give him a rundown of what to do and what to expect.

It’s also linked to a number of other memories Tony hadn’t been aware of or present for - like Peter stretched out on his hotel room bed in Berlin, mask over his head presumably to help block out the other sensory input. Touching himself. 

Tony slashes one hand through the image to clear it. He doesn’t need to watch that. It’s none of his business if Peter sometimes used the mask for more ah, recreational purposes. 

He does his best to forget that he’s pretty sure he heard the kid mutter his name under his breath, before Tony'd killed the recording.

Except - that memory had a ton of linkages to other places too, most of them to what Tony has come to think of as Peter’s dreamscape. Which, yeah, makes sense. Of course the kid has fantasies. But it’s also linked to the memory of that first meeting - both of them sitting on the bed, Tony’s hand on his shoulder, Tony’s hand webbed to the door knob.

There are flashes of other thoughts there too - little more than vague impressions, the way a fantasy sometimes is. Just enough to get the idea across, there and gone almost too quickly to react. 

Tony sees a smudged approximation of himself leaning in to press his lips against Peter’s cheek as they sit on the bed together, watches himself pressing Peter down against the mattress. Sees Peter rolling his hips against Tony’s as he stands by the door, one hand still caught up in the webbing.

He shouldn’t be watching this.

He can’t make himself stop. Peter must have used the mask as a sensory-aid for jacking off on a fairly regular basis, going by the sheer number of memory files PETE has at his disposal, and all of the associated fantasies to go with them, variations on a theme. 

He wonders briefly if this is why FRIDAY had suggested it in the first place. It’s not like he’d ever asked her to make a detailed index of the video content from the Baby Monitor Protocol, but he _had_ asked her to keep an eye on Peter, give him a heads up if it looked like the kid was in trouble.

Tony wonders now how many times Peter’s elevated heartrate had pinged FRIDAY’s alert system, only to be promptly muted when FRIDAY processed the situation. He wonders how exactly FRIDAY learned to make that determination, and thanks his lucky stars that she had. 

He’s not sure what he would’ve done if he’d received an alert every time the kid pulled on the mask to get himself off.

He’s not sure what he’s going to with the same information now, come to think of it. Tony starts to laugh, caught somewhere between amused and hysterical, and buries his face in his hands.

He is so very fucked.

*

Tony doesn’t stop touching Peter, even after he knows. 

For one, because Peter still seems to need it - he’s young, and alone, and the world around them is fucked, and sometimes he seems to need Tony to scratch his fingers through his hair or rub his back and remind him that it’s not his fault if he can’t fix everything himself. 

(Tony’s never been great at following his own advice.)

But more than that, Tony’s not sure he could stop even if he wanted to. 

There are days and nights when the world around him goes sort of soft-focused and distant. Tony knows it must be some form of dissociation - probably something to be mildly alarmed about, if he didn’t have a hundred other things vying for his attention all the time. 

He doesn’t bother worrying about it though, because the fix is usually pretty near at hand. He’ll pull Peter into a sidelong embrace, or wrap his hand loosely around Peter’s forearm as they work together in the lab. It doesn’t make the fuzziness go away, but it does serve to remind him that some things are definitely still real; that even if the world is screwed beyond repair, some things still matter.

He’s not actually sure when they start sleeping together, only that it happens without him making any kind of conscious decision about it.

Kisses planted along the kid’s hairline drift gradually downwards over the course of a few weeks or months - Tony’s not really sure - the only time he really looks at a calendar these days is so he knows when to bug out of the city for the seemingly endless memorial services that take place around every national holiday. 

Sometimes his lips will brush over the kid’s closed eyelids, other times it’s his temple, or the tip of his nose, or the corner of his mouth.

The first time Peter turns his head so that their lips meet, Tony doesn’t pull away. 

Peter will come in late from a long night of patrolling and deactivate his suit, flopping onto the bed next to Tony to regale him with the details. 

Tony will be a little hazy from lack of sleep and whatever he’s been drinking, staring at the goosebumps prickling up on the bare skin of Peter’s shoulder, or his arms, or his stomach, at least until a switch is flipped in Tony’s brain and it occurs to him to yank the sheets down from underneath Peter and pull them up over the kid.

He’s not unaware on those nights that Peter is practically naked in his bed, lying just a scant few inches away. Sometimes not even that far, depending on how the day has gone. Tony will wake up with an arm slung over Peter’s stomach, or Peter curled up against his back, forehead pressed between Tony’s shoulder blades.

One morning he wakes up with his hand shoved down the back of Peter’s underwear, cupping his ass. Peter is hard against his thigh, hips twitching forward in his sleep and Tony reacts without conscious thought, hand squeezing at the thick muscle.

Peter groans and rolls his hips forward. Tony can feel the tickle of Peter’s eyelashes against his ribs as he blinks awake Peter shifts next to him, head tipping back to look up at Tony, who cranes his neck down to capture his mouth in a deep kiss. 

Peter is the one to pull away, ducking down so his lower lip is brushing Tony’s shoulder.

“I - I can’t. I’m gonna - ”

Tony pulls Peter in tight against him, urging him on, murmuring encouragement in his ear. Peter comes barely a minute later, the sound of it choked off in his throat. Tony waits for him to settle, hand still massaging his ass, stopping only to idly trace the pad of his index finger up and down along the cleft.

It isn’t long before Peter starts to shift uncomfortably. “Um,” he starts, but doesn’t seem to know how to continue.

“Sticky?” Tony doesn’t quite manage to keep the amusement out of his voice. Then again, it’s early, and he wasn’t really trying all that hard.

“Yeah. It’s uh, kinda gross.”

Tony regretfully pulls his hand away and at the waistband of Peter's underwear. “Then take them off.”

Peter kicks off his underwear and uses them to wipe himself off as best he can, dropping the briefs over the side of the bed. It’s gross, but better than Peter continuing to lie there in his come-soaked underwear. 

Tony rolls over on top of him when he’s done, planting open-mouthed kisses up along his throat and across his jaw, relishing the taste of his skin.

“Tired?” Tony asks.

Peter shakes his head, grinning. “Not really.”

After that, Peter stops wearing underwear to bed, and Tony stops waiting for his unconscious mind to take over to let his hands wander.

*

Another anniversary comes and goes, and three days later Steve Rogers shows up at Tony’s cabin without warning. Peter is sitting crosslegged on the floor in front of the couch, head tipped back to rest against Tony’s knee. 

Peter jerks upright as if pulled by a string, head turning towards the front door.

“There’s a car.”

“There’s lots of cars.”

Peter shakes his head. “This one is turning into your driveway.”

The driveway to the cabin is at least half a mile long. God bless the kid’s super-hearing. Tony reaches down to tap Peter’s shoulder, gets him to shift forward a bit so he can stand up. He peers through the blinds on the front window. 

Sure enough, a dark car is pulling up out front. 

It’s hard to tell, but it looks like there are three people inside. Two very familiar looking silhouettes, and one he doesn’t recognize.

“Should I - ?” Peter starts.

“You don’t need to hide. I don’t plan on inviting anyone in.”

He’s not in the mood for either Steve’s moral judgements or his apologies, regardless of how much he knows he might deserve the former and, not unrelatedly, should probably accept the latter.

The look Natasha gives him when she steps out of the car is not unlike the one she’d given him years ago, when he’d drunkenly decided to strap on the Iron Man suit at a goddamn birthday party, of all things. 

There’s a lot more to it now, they both know each other better - possibly a little too well. One look at her expression speaks volumes; sure, she's living at the compound, still carrying the torch of a long-dead team, but she’s just as much a wreck these days as he is. 

Steve looks exactly the same as he did four years ago. Tony still wants to punch him in the teeth, just a little. When he hears what Steve is asking him to do, the desire to punch him in the teeth ratchets up a whole lot more.

“We can snap our own fingers, Tony. We can bring everybody back,” Natasha tries to explain.

“Or screw it up worse than he already has, right?”

“I don't believe we would.” And there’s Steve again.

“Gotta miss that giddy optimism. But sorry, no can do. I wish you'd come here to ask me something else. Anything else.”

“I lost someone very important to me,” the new guy says, as if that’s news to anyone. Everyone on the planet has lost someone; usually far more than just one. But he continues, “And I know you did too. And now, now we have a chance to bring them back. To bring _everyone_ back. And you're telling me that you won't even - “

“That's right, Scott. I won't, even,” Tony says.

“Tony, I get it. But this is a second chance.”

 _I’ve got my second chance right here_ , Tony thinks. They don’t understand - they can’t. None of them know about Peter.

Tony doesn’t invite them inside, and they don’t ask. They leave not long after.

Tony doesn’t watch them go.

Peter is quiet when Tony steps back inside. Tony knows that look; he’s listening. It’s another minute before he speaks.

“They’re still gonna try to do it,” Peter says. “Even without you.”

“And they’ll fail. They have no idea what they’re doing. Their plan is based on one incredibly lucky idiot and his knowledge of the Back to the Future franchise.”

Peter is silent, staring down at the floor.

“You think I should do this?” Tony asks, surprised. 

“No. I mean, maybe? I don’t know.”

“And that’s exactly the kind of firm conviction you want when you’re considering messing around in the time-space continuum.”

“I think anyone who sounds a hundred percent certain about that kind of thing is probably an idiot,” Peter fires back.

Okay, Tony has to grant him that.

“I think - ” Peter pauses. “I think you have a chance to help a lot of people.”

“Might not help anyone at all,” Tony says.

“So you’re not even gonna try? No offense Mr. Stark, but that sucks.”

He's not wrong there.

*

Tony doesn’t sleep that night. Or the next. 

He doesn’t drink either, which is new.

He isn’t actually expecting to get anywhere, treats it more like a mildly interesting thought exercise than anything else. Scott’s description of the quantum realm plugs a few holes in the general theory, explains away some of the others.

Tony tells himself he’s perfectly capable of walking the line between trying and not trying; doing and not doing. He can launch Veronica and EDITH and tell himself he’s not weaponizing space. He can create Peter without ushering in a new age of android overlords. Besides, if Peter has any designs on world domination, he hasn’t exhibited any outward signs of it yet. Tony is pretty sure it’d work out okay, even if he did.

“Gimme a Mobius strip, inverted,” he tells FRIDAY.

It’s late enough that Peter’s already gone to bed. Tony should probably be joining him, but there’s one last niggling thread of a possibility he wants to try before he calls it quits. FRIDAY has already pulled up a rendering on the display.

“Give me that eigenvalue. That, particle factoring, and a spectral decomp.”

His coffee has long since gone cold. It’s not enough to stop him from taking a sip, wincing at the brew. Must’ve been one of FRIDAY’s pots.

“Model rendered.”

Tony legs seem to process what he’s seeing before his brain does, somehow, going immediately limp underneath him. He sits down heavily.

“Shit.”

*

Peter is sprawled out in bed, already asleep. Tony undresses, climbs in next to him, running one hand down Peter’s back - just because he can.

He has to wonder, sometimes, how close he came to the real thing. Peter is perfect - of course he is. But would the other Peter sound the same when he sighed, his brow creasing up the same way at the touch?

Tony has come to accept at some point in the months and years since that he’ll never know for sure. He leans over, pressing a kiss to the side of Peter’s head. Peter makes a vaguely inquisitive sound, shifting under him.

“Sorry, shh,” Tony says, still rubbing his back. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”

Peter blinks awake, looking up at Tony. For a moment his eyes are half-lidded, still heavy with sleep. He rubs one hand over his face.

“Did you figure it out?”

“Nah, dunno why I wasted my time in the first place. Go back to sleep.”

*

They go back to the city the next day. Tony keeps his mouth shut.

It feels like the words might burst out of his throat at the slightest provocation, like if he opens his lips at the wrong moment they’ll slip out, as if the very possibility of what he’s discovered has a life of its own, independent from what Tony might choose or not choose to do with it.

Just because something is technically possible doesn’t mean it has to happen.

He could lock it down, throw away the key. Never think of it again.

But who is he kidding, really? 

*

The Mark 51 is a work of art, and that’s only about forty-three percent Tony’s ego talking. It’s powerful, responsive, adaptable. 

It is also (much like art) somewhat useless on its own, without a human connection to engage with.

It stands like a staggeringly hamfisted setpiece in one corner of the lab. Tony has spent thousands of hours perfecting it, running simulations, even wearing pieces of it via the holo-display.

He’s never actually put it on.

“FRIDAY, deactivate the Mark 51 for me, will you?”

The outer layers of the suit peel back, then the inner, the whole thing rearranging itself into a polygon about the size of Tony’s palm. Tony picks it up from the stand, his hand shaking. 

The time travel stuff was easy. Okay, not _easy_ \- Tony is pretty sure he’s the only person left on Earth who’d be able to figure it out without accidentally turning someone into a baby.

But this right here is much, much harder.

Because time travel on its own isn’t enough. It’s not like they can go back in time and hit a big old ‘undo’ button to reset the universe, no - that would be too simple. Whatever the plan is - Tony isn’t totally clear on that part yet, but he knows it’s going to require a lot more than a deep understanding of quantum physics to succeed.

If they’re actually going to pull this off, he can’t be sitting on the sidelines. 

Tony doesn’t give himself time to think, slapping the suit casing to his chest and tapping twice to activate it. 

He instinctively recoils at the feeling of the nanites snaking out across his skin, except there’s nowhere to retreat to - the suit is already enveloping his entire body, wrapping him in layer upon layer of unforgiving metal.

Almost as soon as HUD activates, he’s assailed by a number of flashing red warnings. Heart rate elevated, breathing erratic - none of this is news to him. He’s on his hands and knees on the floor of the lab, praying that Peter doesn’t walk in and find him like this. 

He closes his eyes. Tries to keep breathing. He’s had panic attacks in the suits before. This is fine. This is nothing.

Unfortunately, the part of his brain that is currently screaming at him that he’s about to die isn’t listening.

“FRI can you - is there. I can’t,” he gasps out, not even sure himself what he’s asking for.

He doesn't know how long it takes before it feels like he can take a halfway-full breath of air. His heart is still hammering in his chest, but at least he doesn’t feel like he’s going to lose consciousness at any second. 

He pushes himself up to a seated position, leaning back against the legs of the lab table.

“FRIDAY, run a systems check for me,” he manages.

He closes his eyes again and waits as the suit makes minor adjustments around him; the armor plating pivoting one way and another, ports opening and closing, weapons systems powering up and then safely back down without firing.

“ _All clear_.”

It takes another few moments for Tony to be able to respond. “Great. Thanks.”

It’s like riding a bike. Or Tony assumes it would be, if he’d had any reason to try riding a bike at any point in the last three or so decades since he'd been a pre-teen. There’s still a low level thrum of anxiety there, threatening at any moment to swallow him whole, but for now he holds it at bay. 

He can move, he can walk, he can focus enough to process information scrolling by on the HUD. 

Flying might have to wait until he’s back upstate, not because he has any particular objection to busting out of one of the lab windows for a quick lap, it actually might serve to settle his nerves in a strangely counterintuitive way, but he doesn’t want the news coverage that would undoubtedly come with it. He can remember all too well the near-manic excitement that’d swept the city when Peter had first swung out into the city. 

So, flying will have to wait, for now.

He could do this - throw himself right back into that crucible, hoping that this time he can come out the other side with something to show for it.

He could, if he wanted to.

*

Tony forces himself to spend a while longer in the suit, mostly to prove to himself that he can. That it isn’t a fluke.

By the time the sun has started to creep down towards the horizon he’s more than ready to take it off. Besides, wearing it in the safety of his lab is a world away from wearing it mid-combat. And it’s not like he’s going to be able to test out the latter before it happens, not really.

Tony deactivates the suit and heads upstairs to pour himself a drink. Peter will be back soon, and Tony could use a little something to steady his nerves. He sips it slowly, sitting on the couch in what used to be the main living area.

Peter lands lightly on the balcony outside not long after, deactivating his mask and looping his arms around Tony from behind. Tony can feel the moment the kid notices the suit casing on his chest. Whoops.

Peter’s arms tighten around him. “You put it on?”

“Suit’s meant to be worn, figured I should give it a shot.”

Peter’s hold slackens and he steps away. “You figured it out, didn’t you? That’s why you needed to put on the suit. To make sure you could, before you went back and told everyone.”

Tony glances back over his shoulder, meeting Peter’s eyes briefly.

“Doesn’t have to mean anything. We can forget the whole thing. Have dinner, go to bed.”

“Yeah, and then what?”

Tony knows the question isn’t as simple as it sounds. Peter could go on patrolling just like he has been. And Tony could watch it all from from the top of his empty tower, pretending it’s enough. 

“If I do this, I could lose you,” Tony says. “I don’t think I can go through that again.”

“You didn’t lose me. You lost him,” Peter says, looking askance at the Mark 50 helmet still perched in the corner. “And if this works, you get him back.”

Tony wishes there was some way he could permanently erase Peter’s insistence on referring to himself as two separate people. He’s thought about it - wiping the kid’s memory and telling him it’s amnesia. But the thought somehow seems a worse sin than fabricating the kid in the first place, he hasn’t been able to bring himself to actually do it.

He wonders who it would really be for, if he were to do it - to make things easier on Peter, not knowing that he was created as a replacement? Or would it be for himself, not to have to acknowledge that regardless of what he does or doesn’t do now, there would always be that first version of Peter that he’d lost; the one he’d failed?

The one that maybe, now, he still has a chance to save.

“You have to do it," Peter says. "It’s not even about getting back the people that are gone. I never knew a lot of them, not really, so I can’t really talk about that. But the people that are left - they need it too, maybe more than the ones that vanished.”

Maybe it would be easier to think he was doing this for Peter’s sake - saving the kid from oblivion. 

It’s harder to admit that maybe, just maybe, it isn’t about Peter at all. 

Because no matter how many nights he spends with this version of Peter safe and warm in his arms, he can’t manage to erase the feeling of the kid clinging to him in those last moments, begging for help - and alcohol can only do so much to dull the sharp, ragged edges of it.

As if on cue, Peter takes the empty glass from his hand, coming around to sit next to him on the couch. Tony wraps an arm around Peter’s shoulders, pulling him in close. They sit quietly for a few moments, neither one seeming to know what to say.

“Can I get rid of that fucking helmet already?” Tony asks, more to break the heavy silence than anything else.

Peter looks up, taken aback. “You want to get rid of it?”

“God, yes. It’s awful, I don’t know why you like the thing so much.”

“It’s not about the helmet, I mean the helmet is cool and all, but that's not why I like keeping it around. It’s about the memory.”

 _That_ memory. Of course it is.

"Christ, kid. Why?"

“I guess I didn’t really understand why I was here, not until I saw it. I wasn’t just around so you had someone to talk to, or like, so I could go be Spider-Man.”

“Kid, that’s not why. You have to know that’s not why I - ”

Peter rolls his eyes. “I didn’t mean it like that. I don’t think you made me to like, be with, or whatever. I think you made me because you couldn’t face living in a world where he was gone. And, I think.... I think even with me here, you still can’t really deal with it, ‘cause he’s still gone.”

Tony closes his eyes, breathes in the scent of Peter’s hair. The hair itself is soft, and a little bit wild from pulling off his mask. He gets what Peter is trying to say, or he thinks he does. However long the odds of success might be, he has to try - if for no other reason than his certainty that the guilt of not trying would eventually consume him.

“Getting him back doesn’t change anything about this,” he whispers into Peter's hair. “About us. You know that, right?”

“I know,” Peter replies, and Tony can tell he doesn’t really believe it.

That’s okay. Belief can come later.

He does some of his best work under pressure, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Does this fic exist because I want an excuse to write (eventual) angsty P/P/T threesome fic? No, that doesn't sound like me at all. Oh wait, yes it does. That sounds exactly like me. Speaking of which:
> 
> The sequel (a work in progress) can be found here: [Set Theory](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19904914/chapters/47147797)


End file.
